A Year With Thomas Merton - May 19

Accepting My Place in Creation

One lovely dawn after another. Such peace! Meditation with fireflies, mist in the valley, last quarter of the moon, distant owls--gradual inner awakening and centering in peace and in a harmony of love and gratitude. Yesterday I wrote to the man at McGill University who thought all contemplation was a manifestation of narcissistic regression! That is just what it is not. A complete awakening of identity and rapport! It implies an awareness and acceptance of one's place in the whole, first the whole of creation, then the whole plan of Redemption--to find oneself in the great mystery of fulfillment which is the Mystery of Christ. Consonantia and not confusio.

Jack Ford brought me a couple of loaves of pumpernickel from a Jewish delicatessen in Louisville Monday, and he also gave me some excellent tea, which I iced myself for supper tonight. Twining's Earl Grey. It was superb! And that was about all I had for supper with a can of mandarin oranges. Cool and pleasant. But it is still hot. The sky is cloudy. The birds still sing. Maybe there will be rain tonight.

At Mass I shall pray especially for the Buddhist Vo Tanh Minh, who has been fasting since March in Brooklyn in protest against the fighting in Vietnam. He will probably die, as there is little likelihood of a cease-fire. His calm and peace are completely admirable.

May 23 and 25, 1965, V.250-51

A Year With Thomas Merton - December 26 [89th birthday of Emma Carlotta Eanes Rabensteiner]

Awakened in the Holy Spirit

The union of contemplation and eschatology is clear in the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Him we are awakened to know the Father because in Him we are refashioned in the likeness of the Son. And it is in this likeness that the Spirit will bring us at last to the clear vision of the invisible Father in the Son's glory, which will also be our glory. Meanwhile, it is the Spirit who awakens in our heart the faith and hope in which we cry for the eschatological fulfillment and vision. And in this hope there is already a beginning, an earnest of the fulfillment. This is our contemplation: the realization and "experience" of the life-giving Spirit in Whom the Father is present to us through the Son, our way, truth and life. The realization that we are on the way, that because we are on the way, we are in that Truth which is the end, and by which we are already fully and eternally alive. Contemplation is the loving sense of this life and this presence and this eternity.

December 22, 1964, V.182